


Tangential Intersection

by Mags



Series: Avengersbent [2]
Category: Homestuck, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Troll AU, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mags/pseuds/Mags
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Before I worked for SHIELD, I uh… well, I made a name for myself. I have a very specific skillset. I didn't care who I used it for, or on. I got on SHIELD's radar in a bad way. Agent Barton was sent to kill me, he made a different call.”</p><p>Adventure! Romance! Worldbuilding! All that and more on Budapest Orbital Station, where a moirallegiance blooms amidst rustblooded conflict.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Or: Sci-fi Budapest (that bears perhaps too much of a resemblance to a similar station in the second Mass Effect game) and adorkable moirails. I absolutely love analyzing pale relationships, so expect to see at least two more before I'm done with Avengersbent.

With an average hue of a shade above brown, the Budapest Orbital Station has been built and rebuilt so many times that its corridors and catwalks can disorient even those who have lived there for sweeps. The administratorturers are closer to green than teal and are all in the pockets of the shifting factions of psionics and psychics.

Laws are almost nonexistent, except for those imposed by the factions that are continually fighting over the gases extracted from the gas giant it orbits. It’s at the top of the “colonies that need to be cleaned up or possibly just destroyed” list but nothing ever comes of it and, unless Her Imperious Condescension herself makes it an issue, Budapest will probably remain as it is indefinitely.

Your name is Marksman Hawkeyes, and your mission is to find the anti-tyrian insurgent or insurgents known only as the White Dowager. All intel indicates that they operate out of Budapest, so that’s where you are now.

*

As soon as your shuttle docs with the station you feel the almost inaudible nails-on-chalkboard screech of a psychic reaching for your mind. You brush the contact off with a thought and stab at the door release button. Dealing with psychics always leaves you irritable.

You’re glad you’re going hemononymous for this mission as you step out into the throng of rustbloods. As it is now, you don’t stand out but a single cut would change that.

You follow the holographic map in your dark grey contacts to the nearest official office—a cargo manager going by the plaque on the door.

You let out a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding as soon as you enter the less-crowded office and size up the greenblood sitting at the desk. Short and nervous, but affluent: paid off, but only since recently.

He quickly captchalogues stacks of papers and a pile of imperial bartering chits before looking over his glasses at you. “Yes?” he says, trying to appear bored.

You hand him a cerulean imperial access card and say, “I’m looking for an individual on this station whom we have reason to believe has been dodging the imperial drones. I’ll need access to your general personnel records.”

Dodging imperial drones is often used as a catch-all to put a troll in jail for a short period of time or to gain access to general records without getting many questions asked, and both you and the green know it.

“Fine,” he says, and pulls out a computer from his sylladex. He copies the files onto a datagrub and hands it to you. You nod and take your card back.

As you stand, he puts a hand out and pulls it back quickly before he outright asks you for a bribe. You smirk as soon as your back is to him, and leave.

*

This data will probably give you a good place to start but you’ll need to analyze it. Already you’re starting to feel suffocated by the sheer number of bodies pressing in on you.

You need somewhere to think.

You scan the area around you. This part of the station, close to the main port, is relatively open and has been converted to an open public space between clusters of blocks that rise up. It’s surprisingly open for a space station.

It was probably once the space between two or three added modules; you can see parts of the surrounding walls that still have heat shielding and small portholes, though the rest of the walls have since been rebuilt into the thinner usual walls.

Up a level or two, there are probably ventilation shafts or unused dead-ends that you can sit and think at. Meandering toward the edge of the square, you take a good look at the inhabitants of the station.

About half of the rustbloods have symbol sashes around their upper arms, in shades of maroon with white symbols embroidered in. You’re surprised; you thought symbol sashes were a thing of the past. You can’t fathom why anyone would want to legally and socially bind themselves to someone else so completely, even if the slave gained the master’s blood standing.

And here you see browns and yellows wearing maroon sashes, so there’s not even the reward of higher status.

Leaning back against the edge wall, you look more closely and realize that most of the sashes are for the same seventeen-odd bloods and symbols, with Cygnus, Dracones, Lyris, Boreali, and Pavona the most common. Then it hits you, and it’s dead obvious: the symbol sashes show allegiance to the factions.

You’ve made it to a ladder on the edge of the square and you ascend to the highest point you can find, which is in this case an old maintenance walkway tucked in between the edges of different additions to the station, and viola, there’s a perfect spot in the shadows that you can sit and watch everything from.

You upload the datagrub onto your husktop and set it to do the initial data crunch while you wait, and watch.

*

You’ve been sitting in your impromptu nest for less than an hour (given time and a more permanent location you could do far better but the few cushions and spare clothes you have out are good enough for now) when you hear a slight muffled clang of a footstep banging warped mesh against the structure. You captchalogue your husktop and turn around, ready to draw your bow if necessary.

After a second, all that appears is a girl and you relax a hair. She’s small, both in stature and in build, and she doesn’t look a night over eight.

“Hi,” she says brightly, and you finally find her symbol, almost completely obscured by a shoulder-slung belt. She’s a high yellow, a Cerpio. Her eyes flick over you, looking for a sign somewhere on your clothing. Not that you have one on you.

“Sorry, am I intruding?” you ask, not wanting to rub anybody the wrong way on your first night here.

“No, it’s fine,” she says, plopping down on the edge of your nest. You prickle at the casual intrusion. “I don’t usually have company up here is all.”

“Come up here often?” You definitely want an ally here on Budapest, someone who knows the terrain.

“Sometimes,” she says, like it doesn’t matter. You can’t tell if she’s air-headed or hiding something, and that bothers you. “Oh, by the way, I’m Nataya. Nataya Basimu.”

“Clyntr Barton,” you say, and realize that you accidentally told her your real wiggler name rather than the fake one you’d planned on using. _Real smooth, Hawkeyes._

You pull out your husktop, angling the screen away from Nataya, and start looking through the connections it’s found so far; she looks over the railing with wigglerish delight, legs swinging idly over the edge.

There are obvious clusters in the above-board transaction records that are probably factions, but nothing to suggest a trace of the White Dowager. The transit records from the port are too incomplete and numerous to give you much information; at least a dozen trolls came and went at the same time as the White Dowager probably did.

Well, at least you know that they’re not allied with a specific faction. The White Dowager has made that clear enough, willing to assassinate any faction member for the right price.

You close and captchalogue your husktop, stretching back against the wall of your nest. You’ll need to find a more permanent nesting site if you’re going to be here for very long, preferably deep in the bowels of the station. You’d prefer to work (and sleep, if you’re here more than a few days) in a more defensible position.

Captchaloguing your nest materials, you stand and offer a hand to Nataya. Her hand is warm but not very—in fact, she’s quite cold for a yellowblood—as she takes your hand, pulling on it as she stands.

“I’m off,” you say, beginning your climb back down to the square. “Bye, Basimu.”

“Bye, Barton,” she says.

*

You spend the rest of the night and part of the next day (not that Budapest ever really sleeps) looking for clues in the crowds of the station. Most open public places are packed around the clock so you have to slip off into an alleyway periodically to get some breathing room, even if it means you have to avoid a stabbing or psychic assault each time.

You’ve ordered some food when you notice, in the overhang of a hive hanging over the street, three trolls with different symbol sashes talking, heads down and backs to the main flow of people. One of them passes another something and then they break up, walking away without a backward glance.

Cursing the lack of up-to-date info about Budapest’s factions, you grab your food—some kind of processed meat—and start down the street. You hadn’t seen any overt socialization between sashed faction members earlier, but then you spy another group of them, between just two factions this time, exchanging a case for a datagrub.

What was it that the White Dowager was wanted for? You pull up the report: _The White Dowager is now classified as an indigo-level risk because (1) their abilities and lack of discretion on kills may be used to attack the empire and (2) their actions as a mercenary have begun to destabilize the Budapesti factions._

You look around quickly, thinking up and discarding half-baked ideas on how to figure out what’s going on with the factions. You’re standing still, caught in indecision, when you see a familiar face walking down the street.

“Basimu!” you call. “Hey, Nataya!”

She stops and looks around, eyes scanning the crowd until she finds you.

When she walks over you step to the side of the street. “I’ve been trying to find information on the current state of the factions here but there doesn’t seem to be much recent info on the net. Would you happen to know anything?”

“You a newspaperishioner?”

“Something like that.”

She looks you up and down and it’s a surprisingly hard look for the somewhat carefree troll you’ve seen so far. “They’re gearing up for war,” she says, matter-of-fact.

“Normally they can’t trust each other for long enough to ally for long but some of the more contentious members have been killed off and the White Dowager’s given them a common enemy. There’s two main groups, led by Lyris and Boreali. This place’ll be a bloodbath soon. But first they’re going to kill the White Dowager. You’ve heard of her, yeah?”

“Her?”

“’Swhat I’ve heard,” she says with a shrug.

“Do you know anything else about her?”

“Only that she can and will kill anybody for the right price. One of Death’s own handmaidens, people call her.”

“How poetic,” you say dryly. “Well, I’m going to see if I can find anything else out.”

“I’ll be in touch,” she says, and melts into the crowd.


	2. Chapter 2

Your orders are to kill the White Dowager, but you know that the imperial agenda doesn’t have complete anarchy in Budapest Station anywhere on the list. If there was a way to do both...

But first you have to find your target. You pull up the reports that you have access to on your contacts and most of them agree that the White Dowager is probably a single individual.

Whoever it is, they have to have a base of operations. If you were doing this, you’d want somewhere out of the way, with plenty of routes to and from, and in faction-neutral (or at least faction-ignored) territory. Now where here would fit those criteria?

*

You would seriously consider taking ducts as your kismesis if it wouldn’t get you culled. So many of your missions involve crawling through dusty, sticky, how-long-has-that-been-dead-there ducts. And _fans_ , ugh. You could write whole _books_ on how much you hate fans.

You finally come to a horizontal section when you feel a touch on your mind. It’s not claws tearing at your defenses, though, but rather the gentle lap of waves against the shore: backwash from a dying psychic.

The feeling tapers off about halfway there, but the scent of blood leads you the rest of the way.

In a dead-end corridor lies the corpse of a low yellowblood, head nearly severed from his neck. There’s a symbol scored into his cheek, an X with the top and bottom points connected to form an hourglass shape. The two small triangles match the markings found in and around most attributed White Dowager kills.

Judging by the mostly-dried blood, this troll’s been dying for at least an hour, so there’s no point in chasing after the killer. You take a few pictures with your contacts and send in a quick report before walking back towards the ducts.

There’s a set of footprints in the dust that ends in an access hatch to a busy street, but you have an idea. The dust in the ducts is thick except in some places, where there’s a thinner middle part. You have no idea whose trail it is or where it goes, but they’re a start.

You turn on the tracker in your contacts and start exploring.

*

When you’ve mapped every trace you can find, it’s around noon and you’re seriously considering slapping on a sopor patch and sleeping for a few hours. You have seven hours more before your work’s quality starts to decline, and maybe a day and a half more before you’re useless.

Your husktop chimes and it says that the corridors you’ve mapped are arranged like a spider’s web, with three statistically likely bases, and hey, you don’t really need sleep.

Heh. _Sleep_. Sleep is for losers. (You’re not a big fan of recuperacoons anyway.)

You pop a piece of caffeine-laced gum into your mouth and pull up the locations, and, of _course_ , they’re all practically on the other side of the station. You decide to take the overland route even though you’ll have to brave the crowds, because you are _done_ with ducts for today. Tonight. Whatever.

You make it through the station without any major incidents (though you do have to stab an overly pushy salestroll in the market area) but as you approach the access hatch to the nearest base, you almost run into Nataya coming out of said hatch.

Her hair is covering the left side of her face, with a bandage peeking out from underneath. There’s a bit of a bruise under her eye but it’s already faded to a dark grey.

“You again,” she says, not particularly happy to see you. “You keep showing up.”

“I could say the same to you,” you say lightly.

She looks at you suspiciously and walks away with a slight limp.

“What’s her problem,” you mutter, climbing through the hatch.

*

You find a small hideaway in the second place you look. There’s food, clothes, and weapons tucked away, but nothing to definitively pin this on the White Dowager.

You are tired, dirty, hungry, and frustrated. You’d hoped to go through this mission without any SHIELD hand-holding but you need some expert input.

Scowling, you swear to make the White Dowager pay for all the trouble they’ve caused you. You don’t have any directions on exactly _how_ to kill them and you can think of some _woah hold up a second Hawkeyes take a deep breath_.

_Falling in hate with your target is the rookiest mistake in the books. You know that. Just call SHIELD, call_ him _, and do your job, and find yourself a kismesis somewhere else_.

You pull up your SHIELD handler on your husktop and give him a call.

“Barton?” he answers. You’ve agreed to stick to wiggler names on this mission, to keep cover.

“Yeah. Colson, I need a second opinion on this. I found a neat little hideout, could be the Dowager’s. Sending you video now.” You turn on the video function in your contacts and look around.

“Look at the weapons, please,” he says.

You obligingly step closer and get a good look at them.

“That one on the left matches the make of the gun that killed the Suzerain a few weeks ago, and the one next to it matches ol’ Windwave’s killer, with the modifications and all. I think we can say with certainty that this is the White Dowager’s home base. Good work, Clyntr.”

“Just doing my job.”

“Hey, wait up a sec,” Colson says. “There’s a fight in theta wing, on the newsfeeds. Bigger than any in a dozen sweeps. It’s messy and probably not coincidentally timed, so Fury wants eyes on the scene.”

“Thanks, I’ll get on that. Talk to you later, Fillip.”

He m-hmms happily and hangs up.

You drop a few remote cameras and motion sensors in the corners of the block and take off towards theta wing.

*

When you arrive in theta wing what little law enforcement Budapest has is shooing everyone away from the fight because they’re using potentially hull-piercing projectiles and psionics, and they want to contain a pressure breach to theta wing if possible.

You flash your card and they grudgingly let you through. The bulkhead closes behind you with a final-sounding thud and you pull on a black mask (low-tech, but it hides your identity nicely).

You know there are probably dozens of ways in and out of here that they haven’t sealed up but you still have to fight down the feeling of being trapped.

Theta wing is one of the older wings of the station so the streets are tall and narrow. The sounds of fighting draw you forward--in the park area ahead two groups are exchanging fire. Both seem to be pushing towards a shack in the middle.

You wince as a psychic blast flies by and duck back into the street before the retaliation shoots right back. A hunk of dirt rockets back across, carried by a glowing red-brown aura, and you are _not_ going out there. Let the lowbloods duke it out for themselves.

Dropping cameras at the edge of the park, you send the video feed to SHIELD.

Colson texts you back within a minute. _Nice view. Any idea what they’re fighting over?_

_No_ , you text back. _Want me to recon?_

_Yes please._

_Ack._

Well, this is going to be interesting.

You draw your bow and fit an arrow with a camera head and loose it through the window facing you. Though your aim is perfect (as always), an energy bolt knocks it off-course and it thuds uselessly into the ground.

Your next three arrows meet with similar fates, though the method and origin of interception change. Neither side wants anybody to get whatever it is that they’re fighting over.

The shack seems like it’d keep gardening supplies so there’s probably some sort of utilities access under this level. There’s an access hatch labelled for sublevel utilities right behind you and well, it’s a good thing you’re not claustrophobic.

*

By the time you’re close to the shack the sounds of battle have intensified worryingly. You’re about three feet away from the shack’s access hatch when an explosion, far too close for comfort, knocks you to your knees.

You climb up into a shack that’s partially in flames and _oh_ , there’s someone else in here with you.

Teal blood leaks through fingers pressed to her head. Her gender is obvious from her skintight white jumpsuit; her identity is obvious from her hourglass belt buckle.

“Fuck, you’re the White Dowager,” you breathe.

She turns and she’s wearing one of those psi-enabled attention-deflecting masks so you can’t tell anything about her--even the shape of her horns is hard to keep in your mind. It’s a good thing you’re as blue as you are or you would be even less effective. And you’d have an even worse headache.

“The hell are you doing here...?” Her voice is familiar but when you try to place it it slips away like smoke through fingers, untouchable no matter how much you grasp.

“Trying to figure that out myself,” you say, “but since you’re here...” Your earlier feeling, black and sticky as tar, bubbles up and you let it _burn_.

She pulls herself into an awkward crouch, stabling herself with one shaky hand, and she has a knife in her hand when there’s a too-familiar _whoosh_ and the flames leap up, now burning in a broad spectrum of colors.

“They have a pyrokinetic,” you say. “I could just leave you to them.”

Firelight dances on her hair. “I know places they don’t, where they won’t be looking. Station Control’s going to flush theta wing soon, I can help you--”

Something explodes and fire engulfs the building. The high-pitched whine of the depressurization warning alarm finally overrides your stubbornness and you pull the access hatch open. “Fine, get us out of here.”

“Gladly,” she mutters, captchaloguing the knife and jumping through the hatch. You follow her and the shack collapses in flame as you close the hatch.

By the time your eyes have adjusted the White Dowager is already moving along. “This way,” she says, leading you off in a seemingly random direction.

After about five minutes more the alarms kick into a higher pitch. “How long?” you ask as the two of you climb through an old porthole that’s had its glass removed.

“A minute,” she says, pausing before turning left and climbing into a Jefrie’s Tube, “but it’s a slow depresh and there’s about a million leaks, theta’s ridiculous that way.”

You float about two hundred feet down in low-grav before the alarm cuts off and your contacts register a slow depressurization. However, the pressure loss doesn’t begin to bother you before you go through an airlock leading to an old back alley and you find yourselves at the edge of a crowd.

“This is phi wing,” the White Dowager says. “See ya.” Her tone is flippant and you swear you can hear the grin in her voice.

You whip around and catch a glimpse of her, somehow back in civilian clothes, as she disappears into a sea of like rustbloods.

“Fuck!”

Unfortunately Colson calls you on override at that exact time. “Clyntr, theta wing just depressurized, what’s the situation--”

“I’m fine,” you cut in. (Fillip’s concern is kind of cute, though. You make a mental note to get to know him better outside of SHIELD work.)

“Report, Agent Barton. What happened?”

“Factions were fighting over the shack, I went in and, surprise surprise, they were fighting over the White Dowager. But there was a pyrokinetic somewhere and the whole place went up in flames. I followed her out to here--phi wing--but then I lost her. She had a fuzz mask on.”

“Damn. Did you get any useful ID then?”

“Female, wore a Latrus symbol. White jumpsuit, though she might have a wardrobifier based on how fast she changed clothes. Longish hair, shorter horns, I think. Oh, and a teal.”

“That narrows it down a little,” Colson says. “For an attention-deflector that’s pretty good.”

You move towards a little cafe-type place, out of the mouth of the alley. “Anything else, Fillip?”

“No, I think we’re good--”

Your husktop chimes and your contacts pull up the video feed from the hideout you bugged earlier. The White Dowager, back in white, stumbles inside and collapses onto a cushion in the corner. Her face is still obscured so her mask is memetic (lovely).

“You’re getting this, right?” you say to Colson.

“Yeah,” he says. “Get over there, this is the perfect opportunity.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice.”

You pull up a map to the hideout and start pushing your way through the crowd. You’ve got one eye on the video when the White Dowager pulls off her mask.

“Holy shit, it’s Nataya!” you exclaim.

“Who?”

“I saw her a few times around the station, thought she was just some gutterblood street urchin.” You redouble your speed towards the hideout. “She was wearing Cerpio in high yellow. Called herself Nataya Basimu.”

“I’ll see what I can find out about her, you go find her.”

“Ack,” you say, ducking into an access hatch.

*

A few hundred feet away from the White Dowager’s hideaway, you stop, blindsided by an idea. It’s novel and dangerous, but somehow perfect.

“Fil,” you say, “I have an idea.”

“Okay,” he says, and you tell him your idea. His _go on, I’m listening_ noises get more and more dubious as you speak. “It’s needlessly risky,” Colson says. “I thought you were trying _not_ to piss Fury off?”

“I’m trying to get into SHIELD for realsies,” you correct, “but if I can’t take a bet where I think it’s a good one I’d rather not. If I succeed then I am officially the coolest bird in the tree, and if I fail, well, I’m young. I’m sure there are plenty of people and places that’d love an archer who never misses.”

“Alright. I won’t stop you, but I have my own job to do. Good luck--you’ll need it.”

“Thanks. Barton out.”

You pull off your mask and, after a moment’s hesitation, set your contacts to clear. _Meet her halfway. Maybe a bit of cerulean will put her more at ease_.

You stride into Nataya’s hideout without knocking and catch a glimpse of her looking utterly exhausted before she spring to attention, a knife in each hide.

“Holy shit, it’s you!” she exclaims. “Why the fuck are you here?”

There’s something about the way she picks herself up and keeps on fighting that makes it so that no matter how black you were waxing for the White Dowager you can feel nothing but pale for this little ball of determination and poise and sharpness.

“Okay, well, technically I’m here to kill you _but_ \--” you hold a hand up to stay the knife she’s readying to throw at you “--I have an idea that I think both of us would like better. Just hear me out, please.”

Nataya pauses, biting her lip, before nodding. “I’ll listen, but no promises.” (She doesn’t put away her knives.)

“Okay. So, Nataya--it _is_ Nataya, right?--you’re a problem to my employers because you’re attacking the empire and because you’re throwing the factions here all out of whack. But you’ve got some awesome skills that, frankly, I’d hate to waste, and you could fix that second problem easily. I’m suggesting that we do whatever it takes to set Budapest back in order and then you come with me and join SHIELD.”

“SHIELD? As in _Strategic Homeworld Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division_ SHIELD?”

“Yeah.” You pause, waiting to see if she’ll say more; she doesn’t, so you continue. “So what do you say? Ready to leave the nest and fly with the big birds?”

She narrows her eyes and sits back. “You _do_ know that those bird puns are rather obnoxious?”

You roll your eyes. “You’re not the first to say that and you definitely won’t _beak_ the last.”

That gets a laugh out of her and there is officially no hope for you because her laugh is _adorable_.

“I accept your offer, Mr. Barton,” she says, putting away her knives.

“Excellent!” You give her your hand and pull her up off the cushion. “So, before we get started, you’ll agree that right now you have far more motivation to kill me than I you, right? So don’t be insulted if I’m a little on guard here.”

“Fair,” Nataya says with a sharp nod. She pulls a pen and notepad out from her sylladex. “This is the current state of the factions, as I know it.” She draw circles for each faction and begins drawing relationship lines between them, narrating quickly as she goes. When she’s done, the page is full of crisscrossing lines.

_Then_ she pulls out a highlighter (and really, who just carries those around?) and highlights five lines. “If we can break them here, then it’ll all fall apart and go back to smaller squabbles.”

“And you just... memorized all this?”

“This is what they pay me for, birdy. And I’m still alive because I’m damn good.”

“I don’t dispute that,” you say and you’re not sure why but you have a really good feeling about all this. “You’re point for this. What now?”

“Strife specibi?”

“Bowkind, arrowkind, pistolkind, riflekind, platekind--don’t ask, that is a story for another night--and a spare.”

“How good a shot are you?”

“I never miss an arrow and I’m pretty awesome with guns if I do say so myself.”

“Oh, excellent. Astarr Salion uses bowkind and if you nail the yellow he’s been hateflirting with for perigees now her moirail’ll go off the deep end.” She’s already moving to exit the block and you hang back a little.

You send Colson a quick text. _Still alive, WD is w/me. DNR._ The “do not reply” on the end should keep your husktop from going off unnecessarily.

You flip your contacts back to hemonomymous grey and go after Nataya, pulling out your bow.

“This way, birdbrain,” Nataya says over her shoulder. “We’re going to tau wing.”

*

In the end, you each kill about a dozen factioners and cause enough chaos to shatter the alliances permanently. Nataya’s predictions are spot-on but unfortunately Pavona faction catches on to your influence and you have to board the SHIELD ship in a gunfight.

Nataya only tries to kill you once (and, really, it was the perfect shot, _you_ would have tried to kill you), and thankfully you jerked to the side to dodge a boomerang and her bullet misses.

You sit down together, dead tired and a little bloody, as the ship’s helmsman powers up for an FTL jump.

“So, uh, hi,” you say. “I’m Marksman Hawkeyes, age fourteen, cerulean-blooded.”

“Nataya Romnov, ten, teal,” she says in one long exhale.

“I know that this is a terribly inopportune time but I think it’s probably better that I tell you that I’m really pale for you, Nataya.”

She opens one eye and looks at you. “In that case, the fact that I find your obviously messed-up sleep psychology pitiable and your clothing pile nest thing really comfortable is a lot less awkward.”

You blink at her, too tired to compute what all she’s said. It had the word pitiable not followed by “not” in it so is there hope?

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” She puts her fingers together into a diamond and looks at you through it. “Pale for you too, you dork.”

You m-hmm sleepily.

Nataya flicks brown blood off her fingers at you. “Get some sleep. We’re on autopilot and I need you to keep SHIELD from shooting me on sight.”

“Gotcha,” you say, flicking maroon back at her. The last thing you see before you close your eyes is the hint of a fang in the black curve of her smiling lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will likely be the longest Avengersbent fic unless I decide to completely re-do the Avengers movie, so enjoy lots of shorter fics from here on out!
> 
> Art time! [Hawkeyes and Nataya commiserating on their failings over ice cream](http://i584.photobucket.com/albums/ss289/maggie98033/TangentialIntersection.png) (by yours truly), and [factioners and pyrokinetics](http://i584.photobucket.com/albums/ss289/maggie98033/TangentialIntersectionII.png) (by [my brother](http://excalibur-10931.tumblr.com/)).


End file.
